A year after catastrophic flash flooding, recovery for many ...

ST. LOUIS — Melissa Ingram opened an email on Christmas Day only to learn that the lease to her health and wellness studio was terminated, six months after record-breaking rainfall last summer left her business underwater.

The landlord wrote that she had until the last day of the year — a handful of days — to collect her remaining belongings from the space.

“It was too detrimental not only to my business but to my family,” Ingram said, adding that she and her husband were getting a divorce.

Ingram is one of the thousands of people across several states who were affected by the rain, damaging some businesses and leaving many more displaced.

The historic weather event that hit St. Louis during the early hours of July 26, was, as the National Weather Service noted, the “most prolific” rainfall the area has seen since record-keeping began in 1874. About a quarter of the metro area’s normal yearly rainfall fell in about 12 hours. Two people drowned during the flash flooding.

Missouri wasn’t the only state to see heavy downpours. The thunderstorms that developed in eastern Kentucky the same week claimed at least 39 lives. The excessive rain and flooding prompted hundreds of helicopter and boat rescues to help people who were trapped by the water.

Flash floods, often dangerous during extreme weather events, wield an overwhelming amount of power in a short amount of time, sometimes limiting the amount of time government and weather agencies have to warn the public.

The weather service recorded 102 flood fatalities in the United States last year, the majority of them during July. So far this year, 43 people have died in floods.

READ MORE: Months after historic floods, St. Louis picks up the pieces

It can take years for affected communities to bounce back from these kinds of devastating disasters, said Melissa Roberts, founder and executive director of American Flood Coalition, a nationwide collective of groups working on solutions to flooding and sea level rise.

“Unfortunately, we see some communities don’t get the support they need and don’t fully recover,” she said, “but for the ones that do, it can be painful for years.”

The consequences can stretch beyond the initial flooding if there isn’t quicker intervention, Roberts said, such as mold in people’s homes, which can have lifelong health consequences if not dealt with.

During a flash flood event, we are ‘at the mercy of infrastructure’

Strong storms draped across the region last summer interacted with an unusually large amount of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, said Marshall Pfahler, a meteorologist with the weather service. That was the partial cause of heavy rainfall in several states, subsequently bringing on massive amounts of water that suddenly needed a place to go.

In urban areas layered with more concrete and less impermeable soils, that water cannot be absorbed, he said. “It needs to run off somewhere and a lot of time at the mercy of infrastructure that isn’t necessarily made to handle that much rainfall.”

Although the area had been experiencing a drought before the rainfall, with that much water falling, Pfahler said it didn’t matter “how dry you are” the ground wasn’t going to be able to absorb all of that water.

Preliminary assessments from local, state and federal officials found more than 750 homes with major damage, with about 500 more affected by the flooding in the St. Louis area.

More than 27,600 people applied for federal aid, according to data provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Out of some 24,000 households who received inspections after registering for assistance, the agency’s Individuals and Households Program approved 13,917 applicants.

FEMA spokesperson Michael Cappannari said the agency conducts home inspections to verify damage for those who do apply. In accordance with federal law, however, it cannot cover losses already covered by insurance.

Sink or swim

Ingram wasn’t able to see her health and wellness studio in Florissant, Missouri, until hours after the rain had hit. The business had been open for four months. It was now under several feet of water.

Her first thought was to file a claim with her insurance, which would later get denied. She then sought help from FEMA and the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency. Both entities, Ingram said, advised her to contact the Small Business Administration, which is meant to support businesses.

Data provided by FEMA shows the agency referred some 17,500 people to the SBA. Of those 2,613 applied, and 1,040 were approved for about $29 million.

Ingram said she was never able to secure a loan.

“We weren’t able to provide the paperwork that they wanted to see in order to get the loan because we were a new business, so we were very limited on the income that we could show,” she said, “I was just kind of left out of everything. I didn’t make it; it was literally sink or swim.”

Ingram’s lease was terminated when she couldn’t afford to pay the rent for the space she was using for her studio. She didn’t get her deposit of $4,000 back.

Now, she’s trying to rebuild her life.

“I’ve been doing everything over Instacart, DoorDash, anything to survive at this point, and hopefully get my business back up and running because I really do like to help people,” she said of her business “I really like to see people become healthier than they were before, and just it was something I felt my community needed.”

Calls for updated infrastructure grow

The aftermath of the flash flooding left many Missourians with questions about the city’s aging infrastructure.

St. Louis has the fourth-largest sewer system in the U.S., totaling 9,600 miles of sewer lines ranking among the nation’s oldest, according to the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (MSD).

In November, weeks after the historic rainfall, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced the city’s sewer district would receive $22 million in funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

In a statement announcing the new funds, MSD said it has identified more than 500 stormwater problems in St. Louis and the surrounding county, adding there wasn’t enough money to fix these issues under the current funding structure. Melissa Roberts of the American Flood Coalition said although the $22 million in additional funding is a starting point, the move is on par with what is happening nationwide.

“We are seeing more money becoming available for adaptation and flooding than we ever have had in the past, but most of that money hasn’t hit the ground yet,” she said. “We have to be really conscious of making sure it gets to the places that need it most that have been most underserved.”

The PBS NewsHour reached out to MSD in October to ask if it stood by a statement it made that the sewers worked as designed when the weather hit in July. At the time, a spokesperson for the sewer district said the rain events “exceeded the capacity of any manmade sewer system.”

Since that flash flooding, a similar event hasn’t happened so far in the area, though local media has documented there have been media reports that emphasize the city’s aging infrastructure.

READ MORE: As ‘flash floods are getting flashier,’ communities worry about aging infrastructure

Since last fall, there have been dozens of water main breaks across the St. Louis region. When a major highway flooded after one of these breaks in May, the city said that fixing that break was only “a Band-Aid over a long-festering problem.”

Curt Skouby, public utilities director, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the city needed to upgrade its water pipes, but lacks the funds to address this aging infrastructure. He added that the necessary solutions will require investment in the system.

The St. Louis Board of Aldermen voted last month to pass a bill that increased the water rate on consumers’ bills by an average of $5 a month starting July 1, 2023. Another $5 monthly increase will start in January 2024.

“It’s been 13 years since the Board of Aldermen last adjusted our water rates, and the City of St. Louis could not afford to kick the can down the road any further. A new Board, under new leadership, took the difficult but important step of investing in our water system now and into the future,” St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones said in a statement after the bill’s passage. These rates, the mayor added, will allow the St. Louis water division to maintain its day-to-day operations and help upgrade the city’s aging infrastructure and “access federal resources to ensure St. Louisans for generations to come continue to enjoy safe, clean drinking water.”

Melissa Ingram, who’s been hosting private yoga and wellness classes to make ends meet, said she can’t help but feel discouraged.

“I don’t have much faith in the business world anymore or the morals that business people have, it’s really hard to try to put a plan together to ever step foot back out with people who will take advantage of you suffering from a national disaster like this.”

As she continues working to rebuild her life, Ingram wants people to know after a year, the journey to recovery for many has only begun. Some Missourians are still playing catch up to a system they feel has left them to fall through the cracks.